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00:00It was as deadly as it was beautiful, the aircraft of choice for America's ace of aces.
00:10It was the best damn airplane ever built, as far as I am concerned.
00:15It was like flying a Cadillac automobile.
00:18It gained an unparalleled reputation as the most versatile and lethal combat aircraft of its day.
00:24It was the Lockheed P-38, nicknamed the Lightning.
00:30It was just an aviator's dream to fly in a P-38.
00:35It made the war in the Pacific.
00:38Designed as a fighter interceptor, it was the P-38 that claimed the scalp of Japan's most celebrated military strategist, Admiral Yamamoto, the mastermind behind the attack on Pearl Harbor.
00:49Using colour re-enactments and archive film, Battle Stations takes to the skies in the fearsome P-38 Lightning.
01:00As the Wall Street Crash of 1929 plunged the US into the Great Depression, its effects were felt worldwide.
01:15Japan, heavily dependent on foreign trade, was severely affected.
01:22The resulting economic crisis spawned nationalist groups, and the country focused on relieving its domestic troubles by colonising her Asian neighbours.
01:33As Japan emerged as a key power in the region, rivalry with the United States over commercial and territorial interests grew, bringing the risk of confrontation.
01:46Japan's aggressive expansion in the region was spearheaded by its sophisticated mono-wing fighters.
01:55America's Air Corps, equipped with obsolete biplanes, needed to modernise, and quickly.
02:01In February 1937, the US Army Air Corps issued proposal number X-608, calling for an advanced pursuit interceptor aircraft that would be able to perform at previously unheard of levels.
02:17We had very few planes that could keep up with the speed of the German planes or even the Japanese planes, so they needed something that would be able to be competitive.
02:28The specification called for a desired speed of 400 miles per hour, 100 miles per hour faster than any other military aeroplane of the day, and able to operate efficiently at altitudes of 20,000 feet or more.
02:43It would be armed with a 20 millimetre cannon.
02:46It was an ambitious proposal.
02:51Six contractors, among them Lockheed, submitted designs.
02:54A senior figure of Lockheed's design team was a man who would become a legend.
02:59Clarence Kelly Johnson had joined the company in 1933.
03:05Recognised as being a precocious talent, Kelly was given free reign to design an aircraft that fitted the specification.
03:12Realising that a single engine aircraft could not possibly match the performance required, Johnson focused his attention on a twin engine design.
03:25Kelly's initial concepts for the new fighter covered a range of configurations.
03:29But he finally decided on profile with twin booms to accommodate the engines, with the pilot and guns in a central nacelle.
03:36Superchargers were positioned in booms behind the engines, and the armament was to consist of four machine guns in the nose clustered around a cannon.
03:44It's really a beautiful looking machine, very impressive, couple of big engines, lots of firepower, all of it in the nose, which would be very impressive if you're on the wrong end of it.
04:00It was a visionary design.
04:04He created something that hadn't even been conceptualised in other areas, and the P-38 was a total radical design.
04:19Johnson's work paid off.
04:21Lockheed won the contract for an experimental prototype.
04:25In June 1937, the prototype designated XP-38 went into production.
04:30Despite early problems realising the futuristic design, the plane was completed in just 18 months.
04:38It was a top secret project that was shipped in by parts in trucks and assembled in a hangar.
04:47Despite flying for only 35 minutes, the test was considered a huge success.
04:52Impressed, the US Army Air Corps decided to go after Howard Hughes' transcontinental speed record, and Lieutenant Benjamin Kelsey was ordered to fly the prototype from Marchfield, California, to Mitchellfield, New York, as fast as he could.
05:10The XP-38 smashed the record by 23 minutes.
05:17The bad thing was they didn't tell the New York people the plane was coming, and when it got there they were told to circle and we'll give you permission to land, and ran out of gas and had to belly in on a golf course.
05:31Though Kelsey survived the impact, the aircraft did not.
05:39Lockheed's prototype XP-38, the only one of its kind, was destroyed.
05:45But it approved its worth.
05:46As Europe descended into chaos, the US Army Air Corps ordered 66 P-38s.
05:59The first ever 400-mile-per-hour fighter was officially given the green light.
06:04Early in 1939, Britain and France ordered 667 P-38s, but the planes, dubbed Lightnings by the British, were to be built without superchargers.
06:22Lockheed engineers protested this decision, labelling the variant, the castrated P-38.
06:28With the fall of France in 1940, Britain took over the whole P-38 order, but their decision to remove the superchargers would have dire consequences.
06:40Having taken delivery of just three castrated Lightnings, the RAF realized that the plane's performance was severely limited.
06:47The British didn't like the airplane, and they'd been in conflict for quite a while, and they knew airplanes, and they didn't want that thing, and it was a real dog.
06:59It didn't have some turbo, it didn't fly high, all the props turned in the same direction.
07:04Faced with an inferior fighter, Britain cancelled the entire order.
07:09From now on, the P-38 would be solely an American fighter, but its entry into service was not a smooth one.
07:19As P-38 pilots would soon find out, its problems were just beginning.
07:24As America's new P-38s rolled off the production line, serious problems began to emerge.
07:41We're not going to try to teach you how to fly. You've all had good training in other ships.
07:45We're simply going to show you how we handle a P-38.
07:48One danger was compressibility, causing the controls to lock up in a high-speed dive, leaving the pilot no option but to bail out.
08:00The P-38 was having a problem, a credibility problem.
08:08Pilots, or aspiring pilots, had heard some things that weren't very complimentary about the P-38.
08:15Now, as young cadets, twenty, twenty-one years old, we really didn't know what compressibility was at the time,
08:24but that was one of the rumours that the P-38 was a dangerous aeroplane if it hit compressibility.
08:32But the most dangerous problem by far was the tendency of the aircraft, in the event of a single-engine failure on take-off,
08:39to flip over and slam upside down into the runway.
08:42Most people were not used to flying anything faster than about 200 miles an hour.
08:48So here you suddenly have a 400-plus-mile-an-hour aircraft with very strong engines.
08:56So if you lose an engine, most people who were flying in the early days would panic,
09:01and they'd roll over and just go right in.
09:03So here we go.
09:04So here we go.
09:05So here we go.
09:09Modifications to the P-38s followed.
09:11The plane's Allison engines underwent a structural redesign,
09:15and outward turning props were added to reduce the effects of torque.
09:18These modifications would make the plane more stable during flight.
09:27And in an effort to combat the P-38's image problems, Tony Levere, Lockheed's chief test pilot, was drafted in to help.
09:35They had some bad rumors out about the aircraft wasn't a safe airplane to fly, and so forth.
09:44And Tony came by and gave us a demonstration of the P-38.
09:48I saw him fly on single-engine and do slow-rolls, do everything that you'd want to do with single-engine aircraft,
09:57and he did it on one engine and had one dead.
10:00And I think that was a real selling factor as far as I was concerned.
10:07During the spring of 1941, the credibility of the P-38 was slowly being restored.
10:12But Kelly's fighter, like the United States, was not yet ready for war.
10:21But on the morning of December the 7th, 1941, everything changed.
10:33In the days following the attack on Pearl Harbor,
10:36the Japanese, guided by Admiral Yamamoto, scored a series of crushing victories in the Pacific.
10:42The Pacific fleet had been all but destroyed,
10:45and MacArthur's army in the Philippines began its ill-fated retreat.
10:51By capturing Wake Island, Dutch New Guinea, and the strategic port of Rabul,
10:57Japan gained the upper hand across the Pacific.
11:02Reeling from this series of body blows, America prepared to send its aircraft to war.
11:08In accordance with the Allied Europe First strategy, the US sent its older P-39s to the Pacific,
11:16and its new P-38s to Britain.
11:19We who went to the Southwest Pacific, any place in the Pacific,
11:24we were just sent there more or less as a holding detail to try to stem the flow,
11:30and hold on to what we had, and keep the Japs from capturing any more.
11:35But the Lightning's performance in Europe fell short of expectations.
11:42Operating at altitudes of around 15,000 feet, far lower than it had been designed for,
11:48the large twin-engined Lightning proved to be considerably less manoeuvrable than smaller axis aircraft like the ME-109.
11:58But the P-38's devastating firepower often compensated for its lack of manoeuvrability at low altitude.
12:04Now, the US Air Force looked for a high-altitude role for its P-38s in Europe.
12:14They soon found one.
12:16Ninety-nine P-38s were modified for photo-reconnaissance missions.
12:20One of the main things you need is stability, and if your camera is wobbling, you're not going to get a good picture.
12:28And the P-38 was so smooth and quiet, there was no drift caused by the torque of the propellers.
12:35And because it was such a stable aircraft, you could get more accurate maps.
12:41But flown without fighter escort, these missions could be extremely dangerous.
12:46We had cameras instead of guns, but we also didn't have as much armor plating on our planes.
12:55The theory was to cut down the weight to increase our speed,
13:01so we were probably close to 2,000 pounds lighter than the fighter version of the same aircraft.
13:08We lost a lot of guys.
13:10We had a 70% casualty rate, but nobody ever considered we were doing anything brave,
13:19because you're only taking pictures out there.
13:25But on the other side of the world, P-38s would face even greater dangers.
13:32In the desperate days of early 1942, one aircraft dominated the skies of the Pacific.
13:37The performance of the Mitsubishi A6M Zero in every major battle of the war to date confirmed its superiority as a fighter.
13:47American airmen flying P-39s and P-40s were powerless to stop them.
13:52The Air Force considered the P-39 as our number one fighter until they had to use it in combat,
14:02and they found out then that it was not the aircraft for the job.
14:06If I had been jumped by zeroes in a P-39 back in those days, the chances are I wouldn't be here talking to you.
14:13That's about the way we all felt about it.
14:16We had good pilots, but they just did not have the equipment.
14:21I wanted to be in an organization that did have the equipment, in this case the P-38,
14:27so that our pilots had a fighting chance.
14:34A new fighter group consisting entirely of P-38s was established.
14:40Now American airmen in the Pacific had the equipment they so badly needed to settle old scores.
14:45The big thing is, our country was fighting for its life.
14:51Japanese sneak attack on Pearl Harbor, they were a hemi-demi semi-quaver away from attacking our homeland.
14:58Our country was being threatened.
15:01What choice did you have?
15:05Even though Lockheed's P-38 Lightnings were being produced in greater numbers,
15:10precious few were deployed to the southwest Pacific.
15:12Despite this disadvantage, the P-38 would play a key role in one of the most crucial missions of the war.
15:23After Japan's crushing defeats at Midway and Guadalcanal,
15:27Admiral Yamamoto, the strategic mastermind behind the infamous attack at Pearl Harbor,
15:33planned a tour of frontline bases to restore flagging morale.
15:36On April the 13th, 1943, American codebreakers intercepted a message which included explicit details of Yamamoto's schedule.
15:46A plan to intercept was devised.
15:48We had broken the Japanese code and knew that Yamamoto was going to make this trip to one of his outposts,
15:59and they knew his habits were very punctual, and that's how they were able to put this mission together.
16:05At 8 a.m. on the morning of April the 18th, a flight of P-38s from the 339th Fighter Squadron took to the skies.
16:15They sent 16 P-38s, twelve of them would be top cover, and four of the P-38s would be the attack group.
16:28They would go down after the Betty bomber that Yamamoto was supposed to be in,
16:33and the other twelve airplanes would chase off any Japanese fighters.
16:37Just one and a half hours later, the Americans spotted Yamamoto's flight of two Bettys and six Zeros.
16:48Four of the P-38s pounced, and in the ensuing battle both Bettys were hit,
16:53and Yamamoto's aircraft plunged into the jungle below.
16:56America's lightnings had come out fighting, but there was still a long way to go.
17:05Now it would face its toughest test yet, against the battle-hardened Japanese pilots in the skies of the southwest Pacific.
17:12With the death of Japan's leading Admiral, America launched an all-out offensive against Japanese airpower in the South Pacific.
17:29The enemy's advance had been halted. Now the United States Army Air Force would fight back.
17:34From bases on the eastern coast of New Guinea, they would attack the fearsome aerodromes of Wiwak and Rabal.
17:44The swiftest and most effective means of gaining control of the air was to bomb Japanese airfields,
17:50to destroy as many planes on the ground as possible.
17:56Such daylight strikes could only be accomplished with a fighter escort,
17:59and the only plane in the Allied arsenal with a range to escort the bombers was the P-38.
18:09For many of the pilots of the newly established 475th Fighter Group in New Guinea,
18:14it would be their first taste of combat.
18:17This was kind of stupid, but at that age we were actually looking forward to getting into combat
18:23and utilizing the training that we had been working on for some time.
18:33Intelligence photos provided by P-38 reconnaissance aircraft pinpointed the targets.
18:40We had a 5th Air Force briefing where the command would get up and brief the desires and give us a plan,
18:47and it was to send the B-25s in low with P-38 cover and destroy the targets.
18:54We flew a long distance over water before we hit a target.
18:58We were probably 200 miles away from a target before we climbed to altitude,
19:03whatever our bombing altitude was.
19:05We would pick up the fighters along the way.
19:08They would S-turn in front of us before we got to the target.
19:13Typically, the Japanese Zeros would hit you before you got to your target.
19:25You may see 50, 100 fighters swarming up from below in every direction.
19:32You know, they're all climbing, headed for the bombers.
19:37That's what they want. They've got to keep those bombers out of there.
19:39And, of course, our job is to get in there and swarm with them and keep them off the bombing.
19:46And that's about what it looks like if you've ever seen a person getting hit by a swarm of bees.
19:53That is what it looks like when you get in combat,
19:56because you've got airplanes coming in from every direction, your own, yours, enemies, everybody.
20:00Anybody that's had been in aerial combat and says, well, it doesn't bother them, and they're not afraid, are first-class liars.
20:14All the time you're in a fight, you're so full of adrenaline, you didn't know who you were.
20:19Because you're so concentrated in that cockpit and what's going on all the time, your head's on a swivel for fear someone's going to get you.
20:28It reminded me of being chased around the block by someone with a gun in his hand.
20:33You're really not really interested at all. It's what caliber that damn gun is.
20:38You're just running around that block just trying to get away, and that's about the way combat was.
20:41As the P-38s tangled with the fighters, the bombers leveled out on their bomb runs.
20:48When you're flying in formation over a target, you can't vary because you had six planes in a formation, three in one formation and three lower.
20:58You had to keep in your formation before you dropped your bombs.
21:02So you couldn't veer off to the right or the left as you saw these bullets coming.
21:06So you had to fly and watch these tracers hitting towards your plane.
21:09Flying at low level, the B-25s dropped para-fragmentation bombs, each capable of tearing aircraft and personnel to pieces.
21:21The B-24's thousand-pound bombs destroyed the runways, depriving the Japanese of any opportunity to fly in replacements.
21:33But it wasn't just the bombers who did the damage.
21:36As you're out there, everybody's yelling at you, Jake, that's mine.
21:40Each guy was trying to pick off a plane of his own.
21:43And I got behind one.
21:45The first time I fired those guns, it just about blew that plane right off the map of the world.
21:51It just practically exploded as it went over the top of me.
21:57Parts were flying all over the place.
21:59When the P-38s would fire all their machine guns, they hit a Japanese Zero, the Zero generally blew up in flames.
22:08That was the end of it.
22:09I was just amazed. It just tore holes all the way up there, and when it hit the wing, the wing flew off, the engine and all.
22:18And, of course, he rolled over and went in.
22:21That was close enough that I realised that that 20mm in the nose was so destructive.
22:29Throughout August 1943, pilots of the 475th Fighter Group flew hundreds of sorties to Wiwak, destroying 41 enemy aircraft for the loss of only three lightnings.
22:40The bombing campaign in the South Pacific allowed the invasion forces to capture enemy positions without fear of aerial attacks.
22:59As the Japanese retreated, the US Army Air Force advanced, occupying the bases that they had so mercilessly bombed.
23:06It might take them three or four days to get cleaned out an area to where we could get in after we'd blown everything to pieces.
23:14The engineers went in and laid down a runway that we could use.
23:18They'd go in there and have a base cleaned out and a strip put in, and in a couple of weeks, it was unreal.
23:25There was a bulldozing off of aircraft that were laying all over the place.
23:28And when we went into Alandia, man, there were piles 50 feet high of Japanese aircraft that they just bulldozed into a pile.
23:39Everything was destroyed. Of course, we lived in tents. Everything was a tent.
23:43I mean, the mess hall was a tent, your quarters were a tent, your ops office was a tent.
23:47Everything was rolled up and packed.
23:49Despite the difficult conditions, there was no respite for the pilots.
23:56Operating from these forward bases, the P-38 squadrons were in the vanguard of the advance in the Pacific.
24:06Even with the experience of the pilots, combat missions over enemy-held territory carried with them enormous risks.
24:12You've got to be off your rocker to want to be a fighter pilot.
24:18Because it's like these little Dodgem cars you see in these carnivals all,
24:23where people are chasing around these Dodgems and they're bumping into each other.
24:26Only visualize yourself sitting on top of a 55-gallon drum of gasoline,
24:32chasing it around like Dodgems and firing incendiary bullets at each other,
24:37imagining what's going to happen.
24:39You've got to be nuts.
24:43There's two things a fighter pilot dreads the most.
24:48Losing an engine on takeoff, when you've got a full load,
24:51maybe carrying a couple of 1,000-pound bombs,
24:54and the other one is every pilot's nightmare is a mid-air collision.
25:02I just happened to look off to my left and, my God, here's a P-38 staring me in the face,
25:07right there staring me in the face.
25:08So I just shoved everything forward. As I did, I got hit. It was like being hit by a Mack truck.
25:14And the plane started flipping all over the sky doing all kind of crazy stuff.
25:19So the first thing, of course, I try to do is get out of this airplane.
25:22I've got the wind is rolled down. I'm going to get out. Now I forgot I got the oxygen mask on.
25:27I still got the earphones hooked on. And the main time the plane is flopping around, not doing too well.
25:32We were always told, don't jump out. Because if we do, and that stabilizer, horizontal stabilizer back there hits you,
25:41it'll break your neck or break your back and you're dead.
25:44So the objective was to try to get out on a wing and slide down a wing so you'd slide underneath that stabilizer.
25:48So I finally worked my way down, get on to the wing, down I went, pull the ripcord, and bingo, opens the chute.
25:58It no sooner opened than here come two Jap fighters after me.
26:02They're coming in, the strafing, the tracer goes right by. Why they didn't hit me, I don't know.
26:07And the two of them are right on by me. I got to reach out and grab them.
26:10And I thought, this is no good. This is ridiculous to stand here.
26:15That's a terrible feeling to hang in the chute and seeing somebody like that coming in.
26:19So I climbed the shroud lines to dump the chute, which I did, I dumped it.
26:24Got the hell out of there.
26:29Down I go. Next thing I know I'm almost on top of the tree, so I let go of the chute again, and thank God it opened.
26:36She opened up again, and just as she opened up I hit the trees.
26:41I remember just trying to kick my legs up underneath me.
26:46Just as I did, I hit the ground and busted the right knee, which wasn't too swift.
26:53I was behind Jap lines, and I thought, oh boy, I could hear the fighting going on.
26:59Fighting against the Japanese in the South Pacific, if you went down, your chances of returning to base was almost nil.
27:06They just didn't, they just didn't get back over there.
27:12Defying the odds, Lieutenant Jake Jekyll survived, and after ten days in the jungle behind enemy lines, was eventually picked up by a Navy PBY Catalina.
27:21By late summer 1943, the US had turned its attention to the mighty Japanese stronghold at Rabal.
27:33Once again, the P-38s were called in to escort the bombers around the clock.
27:39We knew that the Japs had a huge base at Rabal, and they used that base to either hit the Solomons or come down to hit New Guinea.
27:48And it was their Pearl Harbor, actually, of the South.
27:52If we could knock out Rabal, why, it'd be a big step forward.
27:58For several months, the battle to level Rabal raged, earning the pilots of the 475th 62 enemy kills.
28:07The growing success of the Lightning and its pilots was making headlines.
28:13Among those taking notice was the famous aviator Charles A. Lindbergh.
28:18His interest in the aircraft would soon have an unexpected impact on its performance, and on the war in the Pacific.
28:24The P-38's formidable drive up through New Guinea had attracted the attention of America's lone eagle, Charles Augustus Lindbergh.
28:40In 1927, Lindbergh's solo transatlantic flight had delighted the world.
28:44Only months before America entered the war, the famous aviator, a firm isolationist, had resigned his colonelcy in the Army Air Corps Reserve.
28:55Now, eager to fly, Lindbergh had sought reinstatement, but Roosevelt's administration had refused.
29:03In June 1944, without the knowledge of the White House, Lindbergh visited the 475th Fighter Group.
29:10He was curious to find out more about America's only twin-engine fighter, an aircraft he had never flown.
29:17He was a consultant to design a twin-engine fighter for the Navy.
29:23And he was always asking questions.
29:26What do you like about a twin-engine fighter?
29:28What kind of armament do you like?
29:31What range do you think it of?
29:33What kind of combat ability?
29:35He wanted to know all the answers.
29:37Almost immediately, Lindbergh discovered a crucial variable that would affect the performance of the P-38.
29:56Flying at the very limits of their range, the P-38s needed to be airborne and in formation as quickly as possible.
30:03With very small margins for error, wasted fuel could claim lives.
30:09We poured the coal on and started taking off on this mission and I get almost all the way around, I look down there and there's an airplane on the runway blocking everybody.
30:25Blocking the runway forced the planes already in the air to circle overhead for several minutes, wasting precious fuel.
30:31And we were coming back in from that mission and most of us were sucking air from the bottom of our tanks as we came in and landing with very damn little fuel left.
30:43We had a guy run out of fuel on the taxi ramp and I'm really upset and not being very smart, I hadn't checked on my little roster to see who it was.
30:57I just said, okay, who's the blankly blank, you know, that parked these aircraft on the runway.
31:03And Mr. Lindbergh stood up and I about passed out.
31:07I could have, if I could have gone through the floor, I would have.
31:11Despite his embarrassment, Major Warren Lewis made his point. Fuel was not to be wasted.
31:16About a few days later he came up to the tent and he says, uh, Major Lewis, he says, can I come in and talk with you?
31:26And I said, sure, come on in. And he said, I've figured out a way to save more fuel for you.
31:32Because of his transatlantic experience, Lindbergh was no stranger to issues of fuel economy.
31:38He persuaded the group's CO, Charles MacDonald, to let him address the pilots.
31:42We met in a large tent. All the pilots and all our crew chiefs, the ground crew, everybody was there.
31:50And Colonel Mac first talked to us and then Lindbergh spoke to us and told us just bluntly, this is what he was going to have us do.
31:59To increase our range.
32:01And he said, we checked the tech order and we can cut the RPM down to 1400 RPM and use 30 inches of mercury and probably save, uh, maybe 45 minutes.
32:1250 to 100 gallons of fuel on a mission.
32:15Of course, when our crew chiefs and all our line chiefs all heard this, they said, ah, come on.
32:21It'll wreck the engine. It says burn the engines out. This is a dumb thing to do.
32:25But how are you going to tell a man like Lindbergh what's dumb? What you think?
32:30Who are you? You're this big compared to Lindbergh.
32:33To Lindbergh.
32:35But nevertheless, that's the way it came out. And that's what happened.
32:39There were some really bitter questions towards Lindbergh, questioning, uh, his theories.
32:46And, uh, Lindbergh finally shut everybody up by saying, boys, I am willing to fly with you under the condition to which I have outlined.
32:53And it was as simple as that. You can't, uh, fault somebody that, uh, is, is willing to go on the mission.
33:02He's not telling you what to do and then won't go with you. He was willing to prove the theories along with us.
33:07Lindbergh was assigned a P-38 in which to test his theory.
33:14And he only flew that thing and he flew it in some mannerism that he was able to pull it back and do this and get much better, uh, mileage, if you want to call it, that we were getting.
33:25And after the two weeks or so, they tore the engines apart and amaze, not a damn thing rolled them.
33:30We did it on the next mission and some guys had as much as 80 gallons more landing than we ever had.
33:37So, uh, that's the kind of a man that Mr. Lindbergh was.
33:43He was always looking for ways to do things better and to make it easier for those who flew.
33:50In just a few months, the 475th's famous guest had single-handedly increased the range of the Lightning, opening up new targets.
33:58Before, the P-38s had been limited to a 900-mile round journey.
34:03Now, they could fly a staggering 1,800 miles.
34:11We were good for six to six and a half hours was our average range prior to Lindbergh coming over.
34:19And after he had spent that three or four months with us, our range was anywhere from 12 to 14 hours if we had to go that long.
34:29Lindbergh, a civilian observer, had already taught the P-38 pilots how to double their range, but he was hungry for combat.
34:38In July, he got his chance. Flying unauthorized on a patrol with the 475th, he shot down an enemy aircraft.
34:45Lindbergh had his kill, but in so doing had broken his strict observer status.
34:54Fearful that the high-profile civilian would be killed in combat, a public relations disaster, the government immediately recalled him.
35:02Lindbergh's war was over, but his contribution was not.
35:06On October the 14th, 1944, P-38s from the 475th flew an astonishing 1,800 miles to attack Balikpapan in Borneo, the hub of Japan's oil production in the Pacific.
35:20The long-range attack, made possible by Lindbergh's settings, stunned the Japanese, tipping the balance of power like nothing before.
35:29If I had to name one person who contributed more to the war in the Pacific, I can honestly say it was Charles Lindbergh, a civilian, because he showed our pilots how to shift the aircraft into overdrive, so to speak.
35:49Now, the P-38, with its unrivalled range, prepared for the final assault on the Philippines.
36:04From September 1944 onwards, the American advance in the Philippines focused on the very heart of Japanese air power in the region.
36:12P-38s, using settings outlined by Lindbergh, had become the first long-range fighters to penetrate Philippine airspace since the US withdrawal in 1942.
36:23Now, they would be deployed against Leyte.
36:26Leyte was to be the anvil, wrote MacArthur, against which I hope to hammer the Japanese into submission.
36:31Having fought their way up through New Guinea, the P-38 pilots have become one of the most skilled fighting units of the war.
36:44The Zero gained a wonderful reputation at the beginning of the war.
36:50And that was partly our fault, because we were using World War I tactics.
36:56In other words, we were dogfighting.
36:59The idea of the so-called dogfight stuff that went on in World War I, of one plane against the other plane, was a no-no, as far as we were concerned.
37:10And the fellows that broke out of the squadron, after a Jap plane, all by himself, usually he caught royal hell when we got back on the ground again, because that was not the idea.
37:21It was important that everybody knew that you weren't out to run up your own score.
37:28You were out there to work as a team.
37:30And that's one of the things, one of the big reasons, in my judgment, in addition to superior equipment that we had over the Japanese, was our tactics.
37:38We tried to maintain 300 miles an hour and never tried to climb or turn with the Jap airplane, because they could out climb and out turn you.
37:49And so you just, you went away from them and then turn around and come back and took another shot.
37:55And that discouraged the hell out of them.
37:57Kept a very high airspeed.
38:01You made passes at them and they were always the hunted and we were the hunters.
38:08In the Philippines, Major Thomas B. Maguire scored the group's first kill of the campaign, his 25th of the war, making him the leading ace of the group.
38:18He was such a great shot. He didn't need a gun sight. He just aimed the airplane and shot people down. He was probably the best, in my estimation, the best pilot that ever flew a P-38.
38:32Tommy was driven by a fierce, aggressive, strong attitude toward being a world's greatest fighter pilot.
38:43And he was going to make it no matter how he did it. And he was a great fighter pilot. This guy could shoot.
38:52But leading the charge in the Philippines was the group's CO, Major Charles MacDonald.
38:56Every time we had the toughest mission coming up, our first mission said to Rabal, who led us, was Colonel Mac.
39:03He wasn't a desk operator sitting back and saying, you guys do this, you guys take that machine gun desk and that kind of stuff.
39:10Colonel Mac led us. When we first went into WIWAC, Colonel Mac led us.
39:15When we first went back to the first missions we made to the Philippines, all the way from New Guinea, who led us? Colonel Mac led us.
39:20He was a terrific leader. That was one of his attributes. He was a great planner and he was a great fighter pilot.
39:33Some people are just natural hunters, you know, and these were hunters of aircraft.
39:38In the autumn of 1944, the U.S. Marines stormed ashore at Leyte.
39:46As almost 20,000 U.S. troops from the 6th Army tufted out to take and secure the heavily defended island airstrips,
39:54P-38s played a key role, strafing troop barges in support of the ground operations.
39:59In the Philippines, the P-38 would claim more than 200 kills, bringing its total to approximately 550.
40:15With the help of the P-38, U.S. forces had systematically halted and then reversed the Japanese advance in the South Pacific.
40:23We were at it every damn day, keeping the Japs from going into Australia, chasing them from Rabaul back and back and back and back into the Philippines.
40:34It was the Army Air Corps that was at it all the time.
40:37Without the P-38, I don't think we'd have been as lucky to push the Japs back as fast as we did.
40:44In fact, it's probably surprising to all, including General MacArthur, how well the P-38 cleaned the clock of the Japanese over there.
40:55On December the 25th, 1944, MacArthur fulfilled his promise and returned to the Philippines.
41:02The P-38 approved its worth in the Pacific.
41:07America's ace of aces, the highest scoring army ace of the war, with 40 kills to his name, was Dick Bond, a P-38 pilot.
41:19Tommy Maguire, with 38 confirmed kills, was second, and Major Charles MacDonald, with 27, ensured that the P-38 would have its place in history as the most deadly fighter of the war.
41:30As final preparations were made for the invasion of the Japanese home islands, the P-38s remained at the heart of the Allied stranglehold on Japan herself.
41:45But in August, the US Army Air Force dropped its atomic bombs.
41:49Now, P-38 reconnaissance planes bore witness to the total destruction of the enemy.
41:59We were up at about 18,000 feet, and we could see it for probably eight, ten miles before we got there.
42:08And it was very interesting, because we had done a lot of bomb damage assessment, where normally you can tell the type of bombs that were used.
42:19It was sort of like, wow, that must have been one hell of a bomb.
42:24And it was something that left enough of an impact that it's forever burned in my memory.
42:36The awesome power unleashed by the US had ended Japan's resistance.
42:41World War II was over.
42:43During its four years of combat, the Lightning had grown from an undesirable contender into a reliable champion.
42:53In just two years, no less than 41 P-38 Aces had been created.
42:59And the aircraft itself had destroyed more Japanese planes than any other US fighter.
43:05I think the 38 was responsible for winning the war in the Pacific, almost.
43:12I mean, that's, you know, a big statement.
43:14But it had an awful lot to do with it.
43:17Not only was it a good fighter, it was a good dive bomber.
43:22And they also had the F-4 and the F-5, which were the photo versions.
43:27It was a wonderful aircraft.
43:28As I like to say, saved my butt down there in the World War II.
43:37The three leading aces in the theater flew P-38s.
43:42And I feel strongly that the P-38, the good Lord put that airplane over there, it was perfect for that mission.
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